What in the hell …

I turned 30 a few days ago, while in Seattle. It was easy. It just sort of … happened. I’m not sure yet if 30 feels any different or not. (more…)

So I was out of town for a bit, in Portland mostly, with a day or so in Seattle. It was nice. I got two hats, ate some good food, played some video games, bought too many books, and saw some awesome people. Among the excessive number of books I bought is a copy of Marx’s Wage Labor And Capital and his Value, Price, And Profit in one short book. (more…)

I’m visiting friends in the pacific northwest. The thai good out here (well, two thai restaurants) rules. And the trees… there’s these spindly ones in Seattle, I can’t describe them. And Portland has palm trees. Palm trees! Holy crap. (I will later put down an anecdote about Rise Against and palm trees.) Visually this is clearly not where I live. And tonite it’s cool out, cool enough that I felt cold. In August. I love it. Yet at the same time it doesn’t get anywhere near as cold. Neat.

Got two cool hats today, and some good books. Didn’t get any of the several CDs I wanted that I found, because my wife irritatingly (because rightly) pointed out that they could be had cheaper and without having to carry them if I ordered them online. Notes to come on what all of this has done to (as part of my getting older) my relationship to music - and how internet stuff has made the joy of hunting not really work so well anymore - as part of stuff I’ve been writing in a notebook of the thoughts I’ve been having on the trip. Electro

I am now 100% caught up on Nick Hornby’s columns in The Believer, which is all I ever read from that magazine. I am something of a Hornby-ite.

Whoo vacation. (I am not thinking about the work that waits for me at home and in the back of my mind. I am not I am not I am not.)

Oh yeah - and Voodoo Doughtnut… vegan donuts that still taste like they’re really bad for you (ie, delicious). Hell yeah. Tomorrow, gardens (and that reminds me, I should see if I can find the paper I wrote years and years ago about gardens and philosophy).

End transmission.

Sometimes my standard title convention is a bit limiting. And sometimes I can’t think of anything to title my post (which usually makes the title convention useful). Anyway.

This is the post I had in mind to write before I posted the last few (one I wrote from home where I don’t have internet - the one about Utah Philips, one on NP’s comment on Marx and labor power, and the one slapping up those book reviews). I’m a bit written out now, and I don’t have with me any of the books I mention. So this is going to be one stellar fucking post my friend, let me tell you.

A while back I read some of Foucault’s Security, Territory, Population (more…)

I just found an unfinished post consisting of the beginning of a review Kathleen Canning’s book Gender History In Practice. (If you’re wondering what’s on page 123 of this book, you can find out here.) I thought I had finished that before. Turns out I had, but hadn’t posted it here. Instead I’d posted it to goodreads. I like putting stuff up at goodreads, but I don’t like that I have some stuff archived here and some stuff archived there (and elsewhere). I’m copying the review into this post for the sake of having everything all in one spot (more…)

A post in the reverse of my standard order, at least sort of. In a recent post NP writes “in spite of their own explicit claims, these early categories [in the beginning of Capital v1] tacitly presuppose the existence of what Marx will call the “peculiar commodity” of labour power,” then promises in a subsequent post to “sketch the major moves that enable Marx to make this tacit presupposition overt.” (more…)

Todd and I were talking about out political/organizational work a while ago and said to me “you’re going to be doing this for the rest of your life” and it sort of drew me up short. I guess it’s true. I hadn’t really thought of that, at least not for quite a while. I liked the thought at the time. There are also days when I wouldn’t welcome that thought so much, when it would feel more like being sentenced. (more…)

In 1996 or 1998 or so Timmy and Chris and me went to see someone speak who had been an active member and I think some sort of officer in the Black Panther Party. We sat close to the front and paid very close attention. At some point he mentioned something about the Communist Party, about how the Panthers and the CP were the only people who did certain types of work or something. I don’t remember the details. At the time I knew next to nothing about the BPP or the CP and had yet to develop much in the way of a sectarian response to stuff, as long as said stuff was in some sense radical (I now know only a miniscule amount more about these particular organization, but I’m way more sectarian). (more…)